WASHINGTON  Two key witnesses in the Mark Foley page scandal testified today before a House ethics panel that is investigating whether House Republican leaders covered up reports of the congressman's contacts with teenage boys.

Former House clerk Jeff Trandahl, who supervised the work of pages on Capitol Hill, met for almost four hours with the panel. House Majority Leader John Boehner testified later.

Trandahl, who works for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, declined to answer questions from reporters before or after his testimony.

"Jeff Trandahl has cooperated fully with the investigation being conducted by the FBI and the ... Committee on Standards. He answered every question asked of him and stands ready to render additional assistance if needed," Trandahl's attorney, Como Namorato, said in a statement.

Namorato said Trandahl would not comment while the investigation is underway.

The bipartisan House committee is investigating whether Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and other congressional leaders and staffers should have investigated more aggressively after Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., complained about overly friendly e-mails Foley sent to a page Alexander had sponsored.

The e-mails were not sexually explicit, but the Louisiana boy's parents asked Alexander to stop Foley from sending them.

Foley resigned Sept. 29 after being confronted by ABC News with lewd Internet messages he allegedly sent pages.

The GOP leadership's response to the Foley scandal has become a major issue in the campaign for midterm elections Nov. 7.

In an internal report released by Hastert, his aides contend that they first learned about Foley's conduct in the fall of 2005 when they became aware of the e-mails to the former Louisiana page. However, Foley's former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, said he told Hastert's chief of staff about Foley's conduct in 2002 or 2003.

Alexander, who testified for three hours before the panel Wednesday, said he told top staffers in Hastert's office last year about the e-mails. At that point, Trandahl and Rep. John Shimkus, an Illinois Republican who runs the page board, confronted Foley and extracted a promise that he would stop contacting the Louisiana boy, according to Shimkus.

Trandahl also knew about a Foley incident with a page as early as 2001, according to Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz. Kolbe said that a former page he had sponsored contacted his office to complain of e-mails from Foley and that he passed along the complaint to the offices of both Foley and Trandahl.

Hastert and his aides have not given their accounts to the ethics committee.

Hastert has said he knew nothing about the sexually explicit Internet messages that came to light last month until Foley resigned. Boehner and Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., another member of Hastert's leadership team, said they talked to the speaker about separate non-sexual messages to the Louisiana boy last spring.

Shortly after his resignation, Foley checked into a rehab center for treatment of alcoholism. At the time, he issued a statement announcing that he is gay and that he had been molested by a member of the clergy when he was young.

A Florida newspaper reported today that a Roman Catholic priest said he had an inappropriate two-year relationship with Foley in the 1960s that included massaging the boy in the nude. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that the Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 72, said he did not specifically remember having sex with Foley.

"I have to confess, I was going through a nervous breakdown," the newspaper reported Mercieca as saying from his home on the island of Gozo, south of Italy. "I was taking pills — tranquilizers. I used to take them all the time. They affected my mind a little bit."